Alternate Choices
by bhut
Summary: BtVS episode Choices - how it might've went in an alternate universe...
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

_Disclaimer: All Buffy™ characters belong to Joss Whedon and his affiliates.  
Note: Contains some dialogue from the BtVS ep "Choices"._

"...It's way too late. You know, it didn't have to be this way. But you made your choice. I know you had a tough life. I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well, boo hoo! Poor you. You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean, you had friends in your life like Buffy. Now you have no one. You were a Slayer and now you're nothing. You're just a big selfish, worthless waste."

Faith just loomed over the weaker girl and slowly smiled, in a nasty, reptilian way that had very little humor in it.

"Waste, am I?" she said softly, with a vocal tone so ripe with malice that made Willow double-check the sensibility of insulting the Vampire Slayer who wasn't Buffy. "Hmm, perhaps. But I am a waste that can tear you in two with hardly an effort, so maybe, just maybe, you should just keep quiet, instead of playing-out an invitation to the game of plucky prisoner and gruesome Gestapo guard."

Willow's usually pale skin turned almost as red as a tomato – this was something new. "Don't ever speak about what you don't know!" she snarled, as her common sense again got shoved out of the control seat of her brain.

"I don't know? And you do? Oh wait, I forgot – you have read it in those big books of yours, or maybe in that wonderful world of Internet where you can travel the world from the safety of your own home, even as your trunk gathers more junk," Faith continued to smile in that reptilian way, although now there was a glint of teeth behind the lip as well. "But on the other hand, don't you give me any of your lip about your whole racial slash religious identity – not when the last time you and your family has been at a synagogue... when? Back in first grade, when your parents were pursuing some medium-term personal goal and therefore cashed-in on their supposed origins? Well yes, back then you were chock full of national zest or whatever, but shortly afterwards, once the goal was achieved, all of that zest got abandoned just as quickly, and you want to know why? 'Cause you, little Rosenberg, and your parents are hollow!"

"Hollow?" Willow echoed hollowly, fully aware of the vice-like grip on her upper arms that prevented her from moving anywhere – not that she had any place to move: Faith had lifted her up in the air and just held Willow there in her grasp as if Willow was a baby.

"Yup, hollow. Your folks – all of their rather paltry pretensions to the Old Testament roots aside – are just another pair of hollow, fake, psych-crap-analytics, and so are you! Don't you just hear their echoes in that big bowl of baloney that you just tried to shove to me right now? Honestly, Willow, I understand, I really do – hanging around with Buffy gives you a purpose to live, just like that origins thing back in the first grade. But guess what? This isn't your life!"

"Oh? What is my life?" Willow snapped, really wishing that somebody would get in here and shut Faith up.

"Your life? Get to a prestigious school for your kind, get a doctorate in whatever that you're supposed to be good at – or marry a guy with a doctorate, or do both – and enjoy the rest of your life knowing that you're doing the right – for you – thing."

"Yes, that's what you like," Willow sneered, "me being just a scared little girl, afraid of the dark. Well, it won't work! I will be a bad-ass Wicca, and I'll marry Oz, and-"

Faith abruptly released Willow, before grabbing her once again by the shoulders.

"All right, let's talk about something else," the Slayer said faux-cheerfully, still in that soft, dangerous voice. "Let's talk about lycanthropy, then."

Willow frowned. There was something wrong about Faith, about her lips and teeth: the former seemed too dark and leathery even under the heavy dark lipstick, the latter appeared too white and sharp for human teeth. Faith's grip on Willow's shoulders also appeared to be somehow too stiff to be human – but it was still tremendously strong.

"What about lycanthropy?" Willow spoke, trying to ignore her growing sense of alarm.

"Well, Red, it's a magical disease as old as humanity, almost as old as vampirism. It's an old, old magic that allows people to change into animal shapes and pass it on with a bite, altered as a curse," Faith's voice was still soft, but now it had an extra sing-song quality to it, which reminded Willow of Drusilla at the latter's lucid stage, and that was not good.

"Now Oz is your typical werewolf," Faith was continuing, seemingly unaware of Willow's observations, "and so are his relatives, I bet. But back in the past, when Kakistos was still solid, and undead, he brought forth a different kind of lycanthropy – alligator."

"Alligator?" Willow gulped.

"Yes, the American or Mississippi alligator, so long and so big and so on," Faith dismissively waved her hand. "Anyways, I want you to know that Slayers have natural resistance – a partial immunity if you will – to such... sicknesses. But when a Slayer isn't at her best – like, say, when Kakistos removed several of my toes with red-hot pincers – the curse can take root."

Faith blinked, and her eyes blazed with cold yellow light like twin moons with identical black slits in their middles. Patches of black, scaly skin appeared all over her face, and her mouth extended somewhat forwards, forming a muzzle, complete with razor-sharp – but uniformly-shaped teeth.

"The final difference here," Faith continued in a growl that was so unlike her previous soft voice, "is that unlike Oz I am still fully in control of my... problem. And so, it is with clear heart and mind that I do... this."

Faith leaned forwards, her teeth flashing wide and her eyes blazing yellow, and Willow knew that there was no hope left for her.

Outside the Mayor's residence, an almost full moon was rising.

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_Disclaimer: All Buffy™ characters belong to Joss Whedon and his affiliates.  
Note: Contains some dialogue from the BtVS ep "Choices"._

Faith leaned forwards, her teeth flashing wide and her eyes blazing yellow, and Willow knew that there was no hope left for her.

Outside the Mayor's residence, an almost full moon was rising.

"No!" said Willow desperately. "No, no, no!" Despite her intents to do otherwise, she closed her eyes and tried to withdraw to her inner place, her happy place, where she found strength to levitate pencils and the like. Um, maybe that place – and that strength – wasn't quite enough yet to ward off Faith, but-

There was a flash of sharp pain in one of Willow's shoulders, and abruptly she found herself in that place, on an island in a swamp, next to a willow shrub. A rather mean-looking alligator was approaching her from the other side, i.e. from the depths of the swamp.

"Oh no! This is all wrong!"

"I agree," the branches of the willow parted and Willow was abruptly joined… by a dryad of some kind. "What's taking place is very wrong indeed. Want me to help to do something about it?"

Naturally, Willow normally would be very worried about helpful offers from strange dry-ads and whatnot, but at this moment she didn't have a choice. Well, actually she had, but it was not the sort of choice that she wanted to make, so she went with the lesser evil:

"Okay!"

"Faith," Richard Wilkins appeared unexpectedly on the scene. "You're not mistreating our guest, are you?"

"Me, mistreat her?" Faith spoke from her corner, her facial and other features back to normal. "Are you kidding? She's doing that to herself!"

"Doing what to herself?" the mayor curiously asked, but fell silent, when he had turned to face Willow. The young woman's skin had turned brownish, with her hair growing greener. Since Willow's skin was also thickening and starting to grow twig- or spike-like bumps, it was clear that her transformation was not over.

"You!" Willow gasped, as a new wave of twitches and transformations began. "You! It's your fault!"

"Hmm, you're probably right," the mayor agreed easily, then without warning struck Willow on the forehead, hard. There was a sound, similar to something bursting or falling apart… and Willow Rosenberg, back to normal, fell down to his feet.

Well, almost back to normal. Her skin was still somewhat darker and thicker than what it was in the past, and her hair had some green highlights still.

"Interesting," Richard Wilkins spoke up, "very interesting. Faith, you know that her little friends still have my magic box?"

"You want to go and trade them for her?" Faith replied.

"Well, that was the initial idea, yes. Now, however, I think that we'll be able to substitute her magic for the box's, in a manner of speaking. They are roughly equivalent in the magical power at this point, and living on the Hellmouth gives me certain esoteric maneuverability as well."

"You're going to drink her blood?" Faith's voice changed from casual to slightly incredulous.

"In a manner of speaking," the mayor agreed. Then, seeing Faith's still skeptical look, he decided to elaborate. "Actually, I am going to literally grind her bones and eat her flesh."

"Oh," Faith said quietly, as she let several weeks for of plans go down the drain in exchange for some on-the-spot - and much riskier - ideas. "I see."

Willow awoke in a dim room – she assumed it was a basement of some building or another. There was no electricity, just some dark wax candles burning in sconces on the walls, and there was a smell in the air – a smell of blood, and rot, and corruption.

There were also people in the room, one of whom, Willow assumed, was Faith, because the other one was the mayor, and the third… Well, judging from the third's extra-large height and the mouthful of jagged fangs, this was either a really tall vampire or an ogre. Since Willow also discovered herself to be naked and chained to the wall, neither option attracted her all that particularly well. "Um, what are you going to do with me?" she whispered, also noticing the wicked barbed dagger in the mayor's hand.

"I am going to use the magical energies of your body to fuel my own," the mayor said cheerfully.

"In other words, he's going to kill you and get rid of your body," the ogre – the ogress? – chuckled. "Faith, are you ready?"

"Here," Faith appeared from further back down the basement, and gave the mayor some sort of an antique drinking cup. "I'm ready." She avoided looking at Willow, which was fine, because Willow didn't want to look at Faith either – somehow asserting her confidence in face of Faith had gone horribly wrong.

"Great!" Richard Wilkins spoke and emptied the cup in one gulp.

And – collapsed on his feet, chocking – something, apparently, gone horribly wrong. The wrongness of the situation was elaborated further, when Faith jumped up and down onto him. There was a sound the likes of which Willow has never heard before, and then the mayor's head was thrown far, far away, as Faith had used Vampire Slayer strength to smash through his neck with both of her feet and had put her full power into the double blow.

"That's not how it was supposed to happen," the ogress said, coolly.

"No," Faith agreed just as coolly, matching her interlocutrix a glare for glare. "But you shouldn't have tried to trick me in the first place. Now all that is left is to take care of her," she pointed at Willow, who just meeped.

_To be concluded…_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_Disclaimer: Almost none of the characters are mine, but belong to Joss Whedon and co._

Willow regained her consciousness ever so slowly. "What, what has happened?" she spoke, but there was no answer. To be more precise, there was no answer because there wasn't anybody, for Willow was lying in her bedroom, on her bed, albeit fully closed. "Um, has anything happened?"

Unsteadily, feeling both confused and upset for the first time about her lacking a personal cell phone, Willow looked at her bedroom wall mirror, and stared: her formerly red hair now acquired distinct green highlights and Willow seriously doubted that that was dye at all. Her eyes were noticeably greener too, almost luminous.

Feeling faint, Willow sat down upon a chair, and noticed a notice stuck to that same mirror. Gingerly, she reached out for it and read: 'Consider this my good deed for the day. F.'

Thoughtfully, Willow put the notice down and stared at the mirror, her thoughts about tonight completely jumbled-up... but eventually one of them came to the surface: 'What about Oz? And Buffy, and others?' For some reason that thought made Willow feel very nervous, so she quietly got up (since her parents were still away on a business trip), and rushed to the school's library, hoping that she wasn't too late to prevent...whatever was going to take place tonight.

Willow wasn't late. In fact, she barely got there just in time.

"What have you done with Willow?" the looks on faces of Buffy and Xander, not to mention others (except for, probably, Wesley) were purely raging, but Faith, alongside the now-familiar ogress looked as impressed by that rage as a pair of elephants was impressed by a pack of pugs.

"Nothing," Faith replied, languidly. "Now give us the chest, and we will go our separate ways."

"Make us," Xander snapped.

"Into what?"

"Pardon?" Wesley spoke up, even though it would be better if he didn't.

"Into what we should make you? A lampshade, a chair, a table, a footstool? The little blonde, if she is a Vampire Slayer will obviously be a trophy on my wall, and the werewolf is likely to end up another one... but the rest of you... seriously, why should we waste time and effort?" the ogress willingly explained.

"Whom are you calling little?" Buffy thrust the chest fully into Xander's arms, and leaned towards the much bigger female with pure murder in her eyes. "You... tower of Eiffel!"

"Tower of Babel, rather, or of strength," the ogress grinned, revealing her jagged fangs. "But it's all academic to you, isn't it, pee-wee?"

Buffy began to pull out her stake. Her much bigger interlocutrix just shrugged and shifted her grip on the spear.

And at that moment in time Willow appeared on the scene. "Am I late?" she asked, breathlessly.

"No, you're just on time," Faith replied, as her much bigger cohort shifted her stance and literally snatched the chest from Xander. "We will be leaving, now."

"But, Faith, after what you did for me-" Willow began, shakily, but Faith cut her off.

"That was my good deed for the week, now it's back to same old. Have a good time explaining it to your friends, Little Red." With these words both she and her cohort went out of the doors and out of sight.

Meanwhile, Buffy and others turned to Willow. "What was she talking about?" Xander demanded. "What has happened to you? And what's with your hair?"

Willow took a deep breath and prepared to speak. It was going to be a long night.

_End._


End file.
